Snapshots
by feralpixc
Summary: Collection of drabbles and oneshots. No linear order. Changing povs, preseries, future, present, episodes, AU. All genres.
1. Smile

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_Smile_

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He has a smile that blinks. He has a smile that curls. He has a smile that's dark and ragged around the edges, teeth a blinding bite. Then there's that truly happy smile, the one that starts in his eyes, sweeping down to his mouth, spreading to cover his whole body. It flickers in and out of existence as quick as any firefly. There's something visceral about it, so evocative it's an incentive to say yes to anything he asks.

It's eight in the morning and she's supposed to be heading to school, to a sentence in the sweaty gym, a period of dissecting frogs and a test on algebra. She's supposed to be a good girl, do what her mom says and attend. He's sitting in the tree outside her window; laughing and clinging to a swaying branch, looking like every image of her vanished summer coalesced into one, cajoling, sixteen year old boy. Giving her that smile. Telling her she doesn't need another fucking A.

She has to smile back.

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**Preseries. OFC pov. Dean. **

Song Inspired By: _2 Kool 4 Skool by The Salads_

_This is me experimenting with different povs, styles and just… yeah. Experimenting. I decided I wanted to write a drabble for every song on my playlist. I officially have no life. Pixc._


	2. Tick Tock No Time To Rest

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_Tick Tock No Time To Rest_

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Drum beat shattering wild in his ears. Pulse erratic, flashing. Adrenaline pumps, never-ending, no rest. He has to move, move. He has to go, go. He can't hold too tightly. The night is rushing by; bullet past his eyes, blink and it's gone. His hands shaking, shaking on the wheel between his hands.

Flits of images; fire, blood, smoke. Thoughts; can't, won't, no.

It's taken his family, once, twice, again, again, won't stop. _Now's the chance. Now's the time. _Buzzing. But that's what they want. Priorities pinwheeling. His are different. _No more sacrifices._ He won't lose more. Won't, can't, no.

He'll get him back, protect, defend, unquestioning. Fear a cadence that bleeds into action. He'll kill them all.

They aren't going to live forever.

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**Devil's Trap, 1st season. Dean pov.**

Song Inspired By: _4ever by The Veronicas_

_The only real connection with the song in this excerpt is some selected lyrics. This will probably hold true to most of the drabbles._


	3. Love Withstands But Time Must Rest

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_Love Withstands But Time Must Rest_

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Its ten years later and he has memories.

He has memories of sunlight on honeyed hair; a woman that smells of lavender hand-cream and fresh bread. He has memories of laughter and sweetness; being tucked into bed by small, cool hands that stroke his brow, and tell him he's protected – _angels are watching over him._ He has memories of cut grass and raked leaves; birthday cake and singing in the kitchen. He has memories of two happy voices, interwoven into the fabric of his life as sure as anything has ever been in its short span.

He has memories of scarlet smiles bleeding into white chiffon and lace. He has memories of orange light, spasmodic illuminance that crackles with heat. He has memories of smoke, and the look in his father's eyes. He has memories of uncomprehending terror and taking his first order, unthinking. He has memories of running, arms heavy with a precious burden he'll carry all his time.

He's fourteen, the map of his reality already sketched, and scarred, and shaded in with dark pencils. He's fourteen, and the memories comfort, and shape, and make him.

Hers are the eyes that will see him through.

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**Preseries. Dean pov. Mary.**

Song Inspired By: _10 Yrs Later by Collective Soul_


	4. And Now You're On Your Way

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_And Now You're On Your Way_

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Someone told you long ago, the more you think, the less you know.

You know it's true for you.

You procrastinate and push it back, again and again, making plans of how, the arguments, your points, the reasons. Everything jumbling in your head, scrambling out black and blue onto scraps of paper that burn as fast as magnesium.

Your brother opens one hazel eye next to you, sprawled out in the back, legs spread wide on the leather, hands dangling high on his thighs. Familiar as the Minnesota skyline. Turns his head to the side, gives you that face. He knows you're thinking about something, chewing it over, unable to spit it out, too stubborn to share. He doesn't know what. Its Winchester code: don't ask, don't tell. You don't think about having to unlearn all those rules when you leave. How you'll have no space for them in your life, after almost eighteen years of breathing, living, fighting and following them.

It occurs to you in a truck stop in Maine that if you count across the atlas you're thirteen states away from where you want to be next season.

You're better off chasing the sun.

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**Preseries. Sam pov.**

Song Inspired By: _13 States by Michael Meanwhile_


	5. Why Should I Let You Go?

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_Why Should I Let You Go_

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1. You pushed your toothpaste out from the middle. You left it on the sink uncapped, white and blue and green spilling out to stain pristine porcelain. Porcelain I always had to clean on finding the tube, military precision to detail turned to domesticity.

2. You even burnt toast.

3. You hogged the covers; small body twining away from me, sheets held tight in deceptively delicate fists. You wouldn't give them back.

4. I've never told you about the past, and now I never will.

5. It hurts.

6. You're a repeat; record skipping forwards twenty two years, the tune the same, the lyrics changed just enough to have new meaning.

7. You were all the parts of my family I missed at Stanford. My brother's attitude. My father's intuition. My mother's image.

8. Revenge isn't sweet.

9. You left post it notes everywhere; on food, in the underwear drawer, inside my shoes. They usually said _'pick up milk'_, _'throw this out'_, _'clean these'_, or _'eat before it goes stale'_. They always said _'I love you'_.

10. You asked me out after spilling tequila on my research and my lap. You never told me it was on purpose.

11. You were everything I always wanted and needed when I dreamed of the future.

12. You ate pickles with chocolate ice cream, and cucumber with barbeque sauce as midnight snacks. You bought KFC on Thanksgiving.

13. You were always right.

14. I never knew how to act around you; you were never boring. Everyday I found out something new, and fell in love all over again. You always said roses were lame. You took two minutes to get dressed in the mornings, two and a half if you thought it was important. You did kickboxing and ballet.

15. I have nightmares about you every night since. I had them before. You were the first reason I had to be scared of myself.

16. I'm like a powder keg, and it's not like me. My brother is supposed to be the belligerent one.

17. You're the reason I'm back in a life I left everything to escape.

18. I lost everything when I lost you.

19. It was my fault.

20. You're never coming back.

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**Sometime after the Pilot episode. Sam pov. Jess.**

Song Inspired By: _20 Good Reasons by Thirsty Merc._


	6. Don't Give Away The End

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_Don't Give Away The End_

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Destiny swallows.

He thinks he knows just how this will all pan out. That everything we do, everyone we save, all of the things that make him Sam, will have no effect on his future. He thinks that a scattering of words from a man who was about to die, a man whose word he had never simply laid back and taken before, are inescapable. Inevitable.

He doesn't fight the path others have set him anymore.

He doesn't trust me to save him.

It's fair, I couldn't save Dad. But then – I hadn't known. Now I do. Now I prepare.

Destiny bites off more than it can chew.

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**Sometime during Season 2. Dean pov. **

Song Inspired By: _23 by Jimmy Eat World_


	7. The Thought That Counts

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_The Thought That Counts_

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The petals are yellow, curled in towards the black centre, edges browning. A memory of brightness, of light and sun clings to them like scent. Reach out a finger; drift the tip along a stem. So fragile. It breaks.

You left it on green grass, next to a grey memory. It has words of a stranger, someone never known. Just one more in your life; people you should know. Family. Another parent you never had the time with. Still, they fit; impersonal, overused. But it's the thought that counts.

You'd left parts of him last time; just that morning. You want to leave a part of you besides stinging salt water. All they had was this dried flower. You don't know what she would have liked.

But it's the thought that counts.

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**Children Shouldn't Play With Dead Things. Sam pov. Mary.**

Song Inspired By: _24 by Jem_

Specific lyric: _Laying flowers_


	8. Names, Touch, Reality

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_Names, Touch, Reality_

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Money is pretty easy. He has a father that taught him how; enough aliases to last him a hundred life times. He puts the credit card on the table, smiles easy, lies as effortless as breathing, even though the card identifies him as Hector Aframian, son of Bert Aframian who'd checked in earlier. The names aren't him; they don't touch him. They aren't real, but they'll do.

Women flock to him like seagulls on a beach. Fluttering smiles and eyelashes, beauty is simple – pale flashes of rounded flesh and red mouths. Confidence and gratitude is the feeling bursting under skin, fast and dirty is the climax against tiles, concrete, plaster, bricks. They don't have a name to cry against his neck; they touch him but they don't leave a mark. They're real enough for now.

The car is his centre, a dark, corporeal representation of everything integral to his personality. Growling power, gunning down a blacktop, illusion of indifference. Silver linings. Stocked with all manner of protections, salt and iron forefront. It doesn't need a name to know him; and he touches it, hands gliding over smooth leather and metal, unscarred, and still standing after all its experiences. It's real, and the only thing he can truly call his own, without doubt.

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**Pilot Alias. Dean pov.**

Song Inspired By: _24's by T.I._

Specific lyric: _Money, hoes, cars – because if you know that song you know nothing else fits in with the Winchesters, lol._


	9. In, Out, Again

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_In. Out. Again._

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Snow white sheets. Legs wrapped around a tanned waist, tight, tight. Constricting, rocking. In. Out. Again. Push, flex, muscles under pale hands, clenched. Chewed nails a bite, red crescent moons left behind. Teeth graze; a sucked purple cupid's bow. Salt sweat, musk, blood. Heat building, sweet and subtle. Rake of long fingers through brown bangs. Lick on grazes left by a monster. Tangled limbs. In. Out. Again. Slow, easy consummation. Exploration. Large hands holding just enough, calloused fingers so gentle, barely there. Sly kisses with grace, teasing licks pulling in leisurely. Sighs. Nothing but gasping and pleasure and _oh, oh, oh. _In. Out. Again. Blue green eyes that flutter closed on a moan; taste of a sleek bottom lip. Pulsing, beating, driving rhythm. Strength comes to bare, come bare, hers in this moment. Flicker of a fire on the edges, amber light softens, smooths. In. Out. Again.

Flame burns bright, fades swift. Shot star in his galaxy.

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**Heart. Sam and Madison.**

Song Inspired By: _80's Joint by Kelis. _

_Don't make me wait for your lovin'... __I never liked Madison. She had bug eyes. And annoyed me._


	10. 100 Miles

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_100 Miles_

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One hundred miles since the last gas station, petrol scent thick on the air, headache pounding a discordant throb in temples, forehead, jaw. Since the rocking, vibrating motion stilled, since tiny shudders from thighs to abdomen to neck followed in bitter sweet tandem. The scenery paused on concrete and red dust, tin roof and pumps. Pre-programmed image of a tumbleweed blowing past, end over end over end; brambles twisting, creosote and scrub brush heavy in his nostrils.

Eighty six miles since they passed another car, a semi, noise-heavy with metal singing and screaming, engine growling its dominance to all that cared to listen, and even some who didn't. Breeze that rocked the Impala, soft as a baby in a cradle, ominous as too little words. Indifferent copy of a driver, one hand splayed low on the wheel, elbow resting in the sky. Country music loud as mullet rock, a blast of another reality, one that isn't narrowed down to white lines and blacktop.

Seventy four miles since the last change of tape; Motörhead's Overkill to Zeppelin IV, music rolling into the scenery for long, surreal stretches of time, his brother's hands tapping offbeat on the wheel, eyes violent on the windshield. Lips pulled tight over the bite of his teeth. The too-warm glass of the window pressed awkwardly into his cheek, tongue weighted down inside his mouth, eyes burning from the glare of the white-hot sun. His wrath dispels the hesitant clouds.

Fifty three miles since the last dead body; a hare with its ribs spread wide as butterfly wings, flesh pecked and blood mottled, a flash of glistening, gruesome detail at the corner of his eyes, gone not fast enough. Yellow ribs poking up from tawny hide, the grey, innocent fluff of its tail a stuck image in his mind. He can see the journey it had undertaken, the sudden shock of its death uncomprehended. It lays, ears bent and misshapen against the tarmac, paws still running, eyes gone.

Forty nine miles since he drank the last of the water in the car; lukewarm and unsatisfying, the taste old and stale, sitting in his throat long after the bottle's thrown over his shoulder. They'll have to stop to get more out of the trunk, once dehydration cancels out wilful obstinacy and pride wanes in the face of the infinite heat. Hands running down the scrape of denim on his thighs, sweat springing back to his palms soon as the motion's completed. His back sticks to the leather.

Twenty and a half miles since the grunt and shift from his silent partner, sound he'd thought was the beginning of something it wasn't, expectations dying away like the sweat on his upper lip. No chance of survival in the dry wind of the desert running past him. He drags a hand through his messy mop of hair, damp against his fingers, stringy as ropes of disconnected thought. He rolls his neck on his shoulders, loud clicks of cervical vertebrae aligning on the pivot. Roll, roll, roll. Around. And again.

Thirteen miles since his brother looked at him – just a quick flick of the eyes, there and gone, fleeting as apologies. He's got prose scribbling across his brain, things he could say to make this alright, he thinks. Maybe. But they sit unspoken, and he pretends not to have noticed, five indents pressed into the meat of his thigh. The side his brother can't see. He wonders how long until the next rest stop, but he's moved past the stage of are we there yet, and he won't regress.

Zero miles since he broke, said something to make it all worse and his brother's face blank over, smooth as a rock in a rapid river. Zero miles since a burning green sign appeared over the horizon of orange-brown dirt and shimmering tar, rising on metal legs tall as the skyline, black letters telling him of the next town. Eyes over long nose, pursed mouth, taut jaw, check the speedometer, the mileage, the time. Numbers and calculations orbit his head, images and disjointed collections, everything starting over.

One hundred miles since…

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**Any time. Sam pov. Dean.**

Song Inspired By: _100 Miles by Bad Company. _

_Only inspiration from this song was the title; and maybe 'the promised land' lyric._


	11. Bones

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_Bones_

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When Dean Winchester's ten he breaks his right ulna.

He wishes it was something heroic, that he'd gotten it hunting, or one time in the already infinite list of suspensions that he was sticking up for Sam at school. The truth is he got it climbing a tree in the local park. He'd heard a pitiful sound from way high in the branches, and – _zoom _– straight up thirty three feet went his wide hazel green eyes. 'Course, seeing what was there, stuck on a too-small branch so far above the ground, he'd immediately dropped his school bag and started using his small fists to swing himself up into the treetop.

If Superman wasn't too up himself to save a kitten, who was Dean to ignore one?

------

When Dean Winchester's fifteen he breaks his nose.

It was something that had happened before, sure – when you're a hunter you can't escape falling on your face or getting smashed beak-first into walls, getting punched by possessed humans, or even just suffering a mishap in training with your pipsqueak of a chubby brother. This time though, it was sixty seven kinds of stupid. There was a girl involved – okay, yeah, with Dean that was _usually_ enough said. Everyone knew his reputation with the ladies, two weeks after he rolled into town and enrolled into the school, on average. This time though – well, it wasn't a jealous boyfriend with an excessive amount of testosterone, an IQ of forty five and a meaty ham of a fist.

How was Dean supposed to know they were real? Who could blame him for checking for himself?

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When Dean Winchester's twenty he breaks his collarbone.

'Course, at this time in his life he's broken most every bone in his body; some more than once – some more than twice, for that matter. Still, it always hurts like a motherfucker when you break your clavicle, and when it pokes out through the skin like it did there's the added risk of stabbing your neck on the jagged point and bleeding out. He tells any one who asks that he dove in front of a speeding car to save a woman and her child – or that he was protecting an old man from being mugged and got taken from behind – or that he was helping to corral some wild horses and one kicked him in the neck, the poor, terrified thing. Only his family knows the truth, and his sixteen year old, beanpole prick of a younger brother is still pissing himself laughing about it. Dean imagines he can hear him cackling even now – he probably still will be until he's ninety nine. Hell, even if he lives to be a hundred years he knows he won't live to hear the end of it.

Was it really Dean's fault if he got possessed and for a wonderful three and a quarter minutes thought he could fly? No, of course not. Dean's sure you agree.

------

When Dean Winchester's twenty two his brother breaks his heart.

He prefers not to talk about it.

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**Preseries. OC pov. Dean. Smacks of Wincest.**

Song Inspired By: _100 Years by Five For Fighting. _

_I took all the numbers mentioned in the song and brought each up here in some form. 10, 15, 20, 22, 33, 45, 67, 99, 100._


	12. ‘He Must Have Been Proud’

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'_He Must Have Been Proud'_

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Enemy soldiers glittering in the cold sunlight, lined up straight and tall, immobile. Dulled greens, browns and ambers shine against the grey-white clouds on the blue horizon. Light kissing his nose, his cheekbones, coarse grass brushing his ankles and shins, rough tickling. Slippery, unfamiliar clasp of the weapon in his fingers, his dad's warm weight at his back, showing him the way.

Bang. Kickback all along his arms, jerking his small body.

Bang. Sound sharp, too loud in his ears. Nothing like he'd thought it would be.

Bang. Smell of gunpowder, heady and powerful.

Bang. Splinters of stained glass, flying through the air, jagged edges tearing the sky.

Bang. He bullseyes every one of them.

When he looks up his father gives him this smile – something rare and beautiful and just for him. He files it away to keep forever.

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**Preseries/Memory mentioned in No Exit. Title from Jo quote. Dean pov. John. **

Song Inspired By: _1985 by Bowling For Soup_

_Title only thing connected with the drabble, because if you count back... well, Dean was six when this memory was made, and 1985 was when he was six!! YAY! Pixc._


	13. Finis

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_Finis_

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The host smiles, eyes a slanted pitch, the spreading wings of its shoulders backdropped by the tumescent moon, bloodied and triumphant with her stolen glory. Stars in their cold brilliance ignore, ignore the smiles, the smug glow of the moon, holes punched in a backlit canopy.

Thousands of black shapes, shadows a mass of darkness that spills along the dust clouds of the ground, the fragments of civilisation left to ruin. And eyes. An endless sea of yellow eyes, staring up, glittering ochre in the shifting red illuminance that slicks over the battlefield. Crumpled bodies strewn, limbs hacked and shattered, torn off and flung wide, mouths open in silent screams, soulless windows of their faces reflecting the horror of their last image. Men. Women. Children.

There are fires burning; smoke a stinging memory in nostrils, throat, tear ducts. The smell of carnage, blood. Charred meat. Tragedy. Betrayal. Various stages of rot. All lie thick on the air, layers upon layers of destruction, war, the death of an era. Flames fill the world. Spew up from the craters in the ground, flickering hands that grasp and burn all that's left, until all is ash. Ash and scorched dirt.

Endings and beginnings; a gathering of pain that bleeds into pleasure. He is a sinner, and on this goddamned day he receives it; all that he now wants, all that he's feared. Everything he's ever been promised by the one who destroyed and rebuilt his life, killed his brother and moulded him around its own plan.

Watching from the burning hilltop Sam Winchester smiles, a shiver of his lips that's there and gone. The host screams its victory to the sky, ten thousand fists in the air. They consume the earth.

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**Future fic. Sam pov.**

Song Inspired By: _10000 Fists by Disturbed._

_Had to kill Dean off. Don't think Sammy would ever go darkside with his brother around. _


	14. Biblical

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_Biblical_

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"What'cha studying there, Sammy?"

"Dean, I've told you a thousand times – my name is _Sam._"

"Don't get your panties in a bunch, _Sam_antha. Just askin' you a question."

_Sigh. _"Hebrew."

"What're you studyin' that for?"

"Nothin'."

"Doesn't have something to do with that Jewish chick in your chem class, does it?" _Snatches the textbook, grinning. _

"Dean!"

_Smug. _"What?" _Holds book out of reach._

"Shut up, okay?! Just give me the book back."

"No, I don't think I will Sammy."

"_Sam!_"

"It's Dean. Say it with me now –" _Gets tackled. _"Oof! Get off me, Sam!"

"Give me the book!"

"Get off me!"

"Give me the –"

_Scuffling sounds. Minute later –_

"So's she hot? What's her name Sammy? Have you touched her boobs yet?"

"Dean!"

"Sam_my!_"

"Her name is Abilene, okay?!"

"Weird."

"It's Hebrew."

"Oh yeah? What's it mean?"

_Mumble._

"What's that Sammy? Didn't quite catch you."

"It means grass, okay?! Get off me!"

_----_

_The next day when Sam(-antha) Winchester opens his chemistry textbook there is a familiar scrawled handwriting in neon pink crayon over some of his written notes: _

_**SAMMY LOVES GRASS.**_

_The black haired girl called Abilene asks Sam out. He did get to touch her boobs._

_On a side note – he never did finish learning Hebrew. _

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**Preseries. Dialogue. Sam/OFC. Dean.**

Song Inspired By: _Abilene by Damien Jurado._


	15. I Can’t Go To Sleep

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_I Can't Go To Sleep_

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His fingers are fisted in rough bedding, twisting and clenching tight, knuckles white and straining against his skin. Whole body taut with vicious tension. His eyes shut, unyielding against the abrasive images crowding and forcing their way into his mind, sweat standing out on his forehead, silver in the moonlight. He shivers and moans, flops like a dying fish onto his belly, face down into the pillow. The movement wipes away the tears that leaked out; open, gasping mouth pressed into the material stifles his sounds. The blankets tangled, trapping his long legs in their sweat soaked confines. The dull squeaks of the bedsprings at every thrash.

He never sleeps long. His choices lead to this conclusion, and he will always hold himself responsible; responsible for everything he lost. He told the lies, he lived them. This is his penance.

He wakes with a strangled scream, eyes shadowed black and still stuck on a woman on his ceiling, blonde hair wreathing her face as a halo does an angel. It's a fitting comparison – for all angels are beautiful, and dead, are they not?

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**Anytime After Pilot, Season One. Sam pov. Jess.**

Song Inspired By: _Abrasive by Puddle of Mudd._

_Title from song lyric. _


	16. Promises Never For Real

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_Promises Never For Real_

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_This is the story of a girl who cried a river and drowned the whole world._

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She was a gentle, rounded blonde, and was sitting by the pier, tears dripping slowly down her cheeks to melt salty sweet into her mouth. Boats rolled into the harbour in front of her, tooting dully on the rocking waves. Steam rose in white puffs to mingle with grey clouds, and people strolled past, meandering in the quiet lull of the afternoon. She noticed none of it, blue eyes fixed behind soft blonde locks, watching the pink flush of the birthing sunset. It was chilly, wind blowing past, whistling in the cracks of buildings, stinging through clothes, tangling hair. She sat, still and tense, and weeping.

----

_I absolutely love her when she smiles._

----

She came back every day for two weeks; sat in the same place, for those same, murmur-cold two hours, then left. On the last day of the second week, a man who'd noticed the girl each day of that fortnight walked up to her.

"Excuse me," he said, voice rough and awkward, husky with saline air and whiskey courage. "Are you alright?"

She looked up at him, and didn't answer, but smiled. Wet trails on her cheeks, glistening in the fading light, blood red curve of sad, bite-swollen lips. He stared, as he had each day for those two weeks, this time close up. No less caught by the beautiful tragedy.

"I – what's your name?" he said, and she kept smiling, tears rolling silent.

"Hello," she whispered, and wiped her eyes clear.

----

_Now how many days disappear when you look in the mirror?_

----

He stares at his hazel eyes, the sweep of thick hair on his forehead. The dark stubble sprinkling his cheeks from night's passing. He should shave. He needs to get ready. He has a date. With the girl.

She's sweet. She's sweet, and funny, and a mystery he needed to solve. He'd been seeing her every day of his shore leave, meeting her for lunch, for coffee, for dinner, morning tea, afternoon tea, brunch, breakfast. All the meals in a day one could possibly have. But she still hadn't told him why she'd cried – and as long as she kept smiling, he didn't dare ask.

He loved her when she smiled.

This is the last day before he has to depart – go to some far off, war-torn country. Some place away from the girl. It's been over a month since he'd first spoken to her, and their days together had run together like chalk pictures on the sidewalk when it rained. Brief flashes of colour and glorious images that could be, before the weather washed them away in streams of blurred greens and blues. Worlds that could be.

"Could be," he said, tasting it, and picked up his razor.

----

_Watching our mouths for the words that we say._

----

They're married on the ninth of September, quick ceremony with him, her, the priest and two pedestrians they'd asked to be witnesses. All his friends had already gone back to work, and her family wasn't in the area. He watches her mouth as she says those binding words, eyes free of sorrow-sheen, hair bent back in some curled style he hasn't seen on her before. When she smiles at him he can't say the words fast enough.

He kisses her for the first time when the priest finishes, the old man's language clipped and somewhat impatient, but unable to ruin the moment. She tilts her lips up to his, and they clash in a fumbled, shy meeting.

"I love you," she sighs, and her eyes bow. He smiles back, and repeats the words, slow, steady. True. She cups his face with one pale hand, skin smooth and warm. "I love you."

----

_I absolutely love her. _

----

That night they sign in at a motel together; _John and Mary Winchester. _

While they are together she never cries again – and he? He has yet to start.

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**Preseries. Possible Past. John pov. Mary.**

Song Inspired By: _Absolutely (Story of a Girl) by Nine Days._

_Ha, I made this song angsty. Dude. _


	17. Accidentally

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_Accidentally_

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"Wanna?"

"Yes! I mean, uh – um, that is –"

"Good. I'll meet you under the awning at three, 'kay?"

"'Kay. Sure. Yeah."

"No scalpels this time; I promise."

---

She's got strawberry blonde hair down to her waist, and a smile that shimmers like the sun over asphalt in Texas. She's got brown eyes sharp as daggers, eyelashes longer than voodoo pins. She's got a stick figure and freckled skin like his brother's bare back.

She beats him at Calculus and Chemistry, and asks for his help in English Advanced. She churns out remarks about salami that'd make his father blush, and gets squeamish every time someone so much as mentions needles. She has a shy mouth and a bold look. She has a soft volume and a loud voice.

She asks him out in Biology, and he slices his finger open.

---

"Hey."

"Hey."

"You ready to go?"

"Yeah, I told my brother."

"Cool. Come on, we'll walk. How's the finger?"

---

She gets double scoops: strawberry and triple chocolate piled high on a waffle cone, with rainbow sprinkles and a flake. He only wants vanilla. While they eat she talks about her family; her little brother that won't stop nagging her about taking him to see the baby tigers at the zoo, her mom who's pushing her to go into cooking studies, although she can't so much as crack an egg without getting it on her shoes. Her dad who is dating three different women a week – "Reminds me of my brother," he said – and her older sister who has left school and is pregnant with triplets. He listens and injects comments, laughs and smiles. She waves her hands and ice cream as she talks, gesticulating at specific points, getting it on herself – "Thus proving my luck with food," she said, and he handed her a napkin – her fresh apple of a face lighting up with enthusiasm. They talk about school and music, politics and which citrus fruit _really_ has the most vitamin C.

They walk back to school together, his hands sticky with melted vanilla and nervous sweat. Just before his brother's gas-guzzler pulls into the parking lot she kisses him on the mouth and runs to her car.

She tastes like strawberry and spring. He's melting under the blue sky.

---

"Who was that, Sammy?"

"Just a friend – hey, did Dad find out where Rediks was buried?"

"Yeah, we're gonna salt and burn him tonight. Shouldn't be too difficult, the sucker's gone and got himself dug six feet under right in the back; no one'll even notice we're there before we're gone. Bye-bye Casper, the psychotic ghost, the psychotic-est ghost you know..."

"Dean, it's _most _psychotic."

"What-the-fuck-ever, Sammy."

"Jerk."

"Bitch."

---

This time she passes him a note in Chemistry; he manages not to blow anything up, or even trip over his own feet. He's got a goofy smile on his face for the rest of the day though, and every time he sees her it just grows, making him feel a little lighter, his heart jump a little higher. The world seems brighter than sunshine, and his head is spinning in circles that all turn back to her – the pale skin showing above her collar, the amused flick of a brown gaze, her modulated tones as she answers a mathematical equation that covers the whole board.

He meets her at the same place, same time, and learns that she tastes like fruit even without the ice cream.

---

"Hey, Sam. What's the problem?"

"I don't know."

"You don't know? Come on, I know you better than that. You've been thinking about whatever this is for days and –"

"Well, maybe I'm in love."

----------------------

**Preseries. Sam pov. OFC.**

Song Inspired By: _Accidentally In Love by Counting Crows._

_Hee! Klutzy Wee!Sam makes me smile._


	18. Tired Of So Much Wanting

----------------------

_Tired Of So Much Wanting_

----------------------

Throughout history there has been the image of Cupid; glorified baby angel with his bow and bristling quiver, ready to shoot the arrow of love into the unsuspecting. His golden curls, his bright blue eyes, his youth – all signify his purity, his innocence. Some might say, in essence, his goodness.

Why then, a weapon of war? Simply to connote the notion that he is a hunter; to show that he searches for those who are ready to feel the opening burn of that finest wound, love? Is his glee solely that of guileless enjoyment, of inflicting this state of higher being onto the mere mortal? Or is it something more? Is his triumph a result, a culmination of more disturbing aspects of the nature of his spirit, his core?

What pleasure does he find in his task?

---

There's a light in his apartment; in the darkness outside a black shape moves silently, inconspicuous, rain flowing as tears over head, shoulders, waist – falling onto the cracked concrete below measured steps. The internal bulb gives off a warm amber glow, limited sunset in the night.

There's no rhyme, and there's no reason. There's no logic. He's the secret in the back of a skull; a head that's not put on straight, a brain that's scrambled with wayward, transcendent thoughts. Anticipation is a rush, blood pumps, heart pounds, adrenaline swoops and flutters the pulse. It feels like fear, like dying. The possibility of communication – any kind – it's a desire, another problem that he really doesn't want.

There is a throbbing, just below the sternum. It is as though the skin, the muscles, tendons, bone – all has been pierced by an arrow. The shadow rubs at it, eternally questioning – position, presence, purpose; one last glance at the lit room. The light snaps off; the figure leaves, although it is the one left behind.

---

Love.

What is it?

Is it really synonymous with Cupid's body, or, rather, that which he holds in his child-like hands? Why do his targets so often feel the pain without true, and lasting gratification? Why does love hurt so?

All these questions; the marks have no answers.

Love is undecided, it's scary and it aches. Love's confusing, but it never gets dull.

Cupid's barb will always be, and stay, sharp.

----------------------

**Preseries. OC pov. Dean. Sam.**

Song Inspired By: _Ache For You by Ben Lee._

_Inference is golden; use it wisely my children. _


	19. Pictures

----------------------

_Pictures_

----------------------

Secrets come in colours.

Little white lies. Deep purple bruises. Flaming orange ceilings. Flashing blue memories. Pink blushing emotion. Black drowning promises. Green blossoming hopes. Passionate red prejudices. Shifting yellow eyes.

Secrets come in colours.

They are painted in subtle flicks and bold brushstrokes, swooping and colliding and jumbling and spilling together in a swirling chaos of shades over the portraits of peoples' lives.

Lives are made with inspirations.

The artist is anonymous; maybe the creator is unique and singular to each design. Maybe it is just one who births them all. It is a question, a mystery that will go unanswered until the canvas is burnt, or halted in motion, or buried deep.

Sometimes lives come simply in lies – that is all there is. Sometimes another maker destroys the original, washes over with broad brushings of their own manufacturing – and the least they ever gave is the most the rest of the world knows. The outside as deep as anyone can ever see.

Dreams shape lives.

Sometimes the visions weaken, slow, slow into the background of the dawn. Sometimes they linger – more a reminiscence of another life, another person's life, than anything tangible or recognisable. Some are fumbled and broken by a loud sound or by somebody else's whim, splintered into the callousness of reality. Remembered faces blur, and there is no point in screaming with the pain of the loss – no one is listening anyway.

Voices are the lead pencil sketches.

They are the beginning, before the colour has and takes meaning. Audio silhouettes, indistinct shadowy shapes of tone and feeling beneath the tints and layers. Some are small and fading – some are familiar and build the background of the creation. Some are as yet unknown, so many ideas to draw and structure and flit and jam onto the blank white as yet unfilled. So many lines to be erased and redrawn and erased over; unusable. And some are irreversible, no matter what the product wishes.

Subjects are the focus.

Infinite possibilities that have their own needs and wants, demands. That take shape despite the inclination of the painter. So much to offer, and to remove. How many to include? How much to say? Lips that press, or curve. Eyes that smile, or frown. What do they speak unto the universe? Do they agree – disagree? Do they love the lies?

Who are the receivers?

The artist tries to reach out, and falls. Some see right through to the real message, beneath the crumbling flakes of colour, of secrets, of voices, and dreams and inspirations and everything that crams the incomplete page. Some reach in. Some push back and out. Who knows the basis? Did they want to know, or did they stumble onto the truth?

Some paintings hold onto the audience, affect them deep inside. Some sweep and send the people on. Some come back to haunt.

He thinks they all are portraits, and he is still being made. He wishes he knew what he was, wishes he could see. Wishes he could read and understand the underlying meaning. But his portrait – it lies half in the sun, half in the darkness. He is a chiaroscuro of incompleted imaginings and plans.

He needs someone to see past the outer layers – he needs someone to tell him.

What is he saying?

----------------------

**Season 2. Sam pov. **

Song Inspired By: _Acoustic #3 by The Goo Goo Dolls._

_This one is really, really weird…_


	20. Home

----------------------

_Home_

----------------------

The day they cut down the bastard with the yellow eyes its sunny, and the light is shining mellow on his back, sweat trickling down his spine in rivulets of heat and relief.

"Hey," Sam said, put his hand on his where it was still clasped on the gun, shaking. He looked up at him, blinking. "Hey. Let's go home?"

---

They didn't really have a home of course, but they had the highway and they had Kansas, and Kansas had Missouri so they went there. Hopped on the state route and drove through eight miles of sunlight and dust and silence and _it's over, _and didn't stop until they were pulling up outside her house and out of the car.

"Boys," she said, when Sam knocked and he stood there, feeling blank and like the biggest anti-climax of the century. She didn't look surprised. "Come on in. Dean! Wipe your goddamn feet, it's not a farm!"

And he felt kind of awake again, but only enough to smirk slightly and kick his boots off.

---

She made fried chicken and fresh green beans and mashed potato for dinner, so good he wolfed it down with his fork and hands in turns, licking them clean while Sam covered his eyes and Missouri bitched at him and he just wished he didn't have to chew.

She pushed them upstairs into the guest rooms and told them they'd bloody well better have a shower before they got between her clean sheets, or she'd kick their asses. He didn't protest more than necessary to keep face; just stripped and climbed in after Sam had finished, soaked under water that came out of plumbing that didn't scream at him, or run out of heat after a minute and a half of frantic scrubbing.

Stood there under the spray and wondered _what now?_ before climbing back out and falling onto the bed naked. He had a second to hope that Missouri wouldn't find it crucial to wake him up herself in person in the morning, and to bliss out over the discovery that not all beds sagged in the middle and had that funny musty smell before he passed out.

---

He didn't wake up until the sun was sinking back behind Lawrence's houses again, the air dull and heavy with afternoon's lingering warmth. His back was cold, and his bare ass was still on display, so he grabbed the towel where it lay abandoned on the floor and went looking for his duffel.

Sam had found it in him to bring both bags inside, so he didn't have to stroll out to the car with his extremities waving in the wind. Just hauled his bag back with him up the stairs, clutching his towel around his waist while Missouri yelled at him without stopping from stirring something that smelled _really fucking good_ on the stove, and Sam yelled at him and threw a cushion, which made Missouri yell at Sam. The TV was playing some sport with sweaty guys and a ball, though, so Sam's focus had trained back on that when he was half way up the stairs. He decided to hurry, because Missouri looked at least three quarters of the way done and he didn't want Sam to have a head start.

Missouri made them set the table for dinner, and when he made to make comments, just waved her dripping wooden spoon at him – and it really _did _smell ridiculously good, so he just gave in and put down three sets of knives and forks and plates and glasses.

She'd made beef casserole with mini potatoes and an overpowering amount of vegetables. He scraped most of them to the side of his plate, but Missouri wouldn't let him have seconds – or thirds, or fourths, or fifths –_ so what, he was hungry, he hadn't eaten all day _– before he ate them all. She'd made trifle with homemade whipped cream for dessert though, so his arguments didn't really carry any weight.

---

He'd been awake for an hour on the third day before Sam started getting fidgety and made them labour around the house _'for their keep'_. He didn't mind too much, he'd always liked working with his hands, the tangible evidence of a job well done and the feel of a hammer in his hand, wood thrumming with a tapping rhythm. Prying splinters out with Missouri's sewing needles.

Sam cleaned the gutters and he fixed the hen coop – yeah, Missouri owned _chickens, _for chrissakes, who the hell owned chickens anymore, and he thought this _wasn't _supposed to be a farm. She did a thousand loads of laundry – theirs, he saw when she hung his rattiest pair of boxers on the line, and he ignored his blush – and made fresh lemonade and baked chocolate chip cookies. He thought they were possibly the best thing he'd ever tasted in his life, and told her so while she called him _boy _and cuffed him over the head to _stop sweet talkin' me and get back to work_. Sam mowed the front lawn and he mowed the back, saying howdy to the neighbours when they waved and smiled at him over Missouri's fence.

The huge bruise on his spine where he'd been thrown into a tombstone was fading, and he had sunburn across his nose before Sam woke him up from under Missouri's lemon tree and told him dinner was ready.

---

He woke up gasping and shuddering, the sheets clasped around his body sweat soaked and clammy. The image of yellow eyes and Sam collapsing and bloody wasn't getting out of his head, and then Sam _there_, was in the room, telling him _it's alright, he was here, it's over, it's over._

But it wasn't, it wouldn't ever be. He told Sam he was _fine, Goddamnit, _and to _get back to bed, _and that he _didn't fucking need to be petted like a horse. _Sam called him an asshole, and he just laughed, sounding almost normal, and pretended to go back to sleep.

---

Missouri had to get groceries the next day, and told them that _if they messed up the house, they wouldn't be getting any of her chilli or peach cobbler tonight_, which was enough of a threat to send them outside and onto the porch.

They both had beers and the sun wasn't too warm, with this little breeze blowing back and forth like it couldn't make up its mind whether it was coming or going. Sam had that intense look on his face like he was thinking something really important over, though, so he just sat there and sipped his beer and waited.

"We did it," Sam said finally, and he just said _yeah, _looking over at the lemon tree and took another swallow. "Dean, we did it. It's over. I – what do we do now?"

He didn't know, but he knew it wasn't _over_, even if he wasn't saying. It'd never be over. He felt aimless too, like he was stuck in stasis, or maybe that fucking _djinn_ had claws in him again, except this time it was getting it half way right. He shrugged and smirked and offered to drive Sam back over to wussy state with his heart in his mouth. He drowned it with more beer, and closed his eyes.

"No," Sam said, and that was it, he just leant back and rocked them on the porch swing with his one giant foot on the ground, and he felt the sun on his face, nose stinging a little.

---

Sam drove them into town the next day, and he sat there in his car, sunglasses smothering most of his face and wondering what they were doing. They were seeing a movie in the oven of a theatre Lawrence had, a seat between them filled up with popcorn and Hershey's and skittles and watered down soda, snorting weak coke out of his nose and choking when Tom Cruise waved his gun around and did his billion dollar blank-face for all he was worth.

"Paramount fired him," Sam whispered over the seat.

"Yeah?" he said, and stuffed more popcorn in his mouth, wondering why that felt significant.

---

They had coffee after, in a little neighbourhood café, Sam ordering his frou-frou crap with out shame, sprinkles and all. He wouldn't go so far as to let Sam order for him, but he relented when Sam said he _just had to try one shot, come on Dean, live a little. _That made his brain blank like Tom Cruise's face, but he just pasted on a smile and rolled his eyes. He wasn't much for letting painful things drag on, and Sam's whining was one of them. So were the un-thought-out comments that suddenly had Sam freezing, eyes widening at him all _sorry, oh god, I didn't mean it, why did you do this, Dean, why? _

He wanted to try everything he hadn't yet, anyway. New things. That's what terminal cases were told to do, wasn't it?

So when his coffee came back with milk and some sweetened flavour in it that wasn't half bad – _Irish cream shot, _Sam told him with a fragile smirk – he just smiled and tapped his thigh under the table, restless.

---

"I really do want to go to the Grand Canyon," he said on the drive back, "Before." Sam glanced at him, and said nothing. He put his sunglasses back on, hands easy on the steering wheel, and they drove by the old house on the way home, but don't stop.

---

Missouri waved them off a week later, standing on her front porch with an apron on, and flour smudged on her cheeks. They had a still-warm apple pie on the back seat, making the whole car smell like Missouri's house. She'd given them both a hug before they'd gone, holding onto him a little longer than Sam and patting his back when he leant down to kiss her cheek. She smelled like pastry and sun and lemon, and she didn't say _see you again soon, _but she did say _take care of your dumb asses, boys, _which was good enough for him.

They were back on the road and Sam was making eyes at the pie, even though he'd had three helping of pancakes and eggs and bacon. He didn't know where they were going yet, or at all, and Sam hadn't made noises about direction, just saying _we should get going soon, _yesterday,so they had. They had about two hundred hell scum to kill in less than a year now, so he wasn't going to be arguing.

"So," Sam said, two hours out.

"So," he replied, staring hard out the windscreen. He wondered if Sam was going to say something stupid, like _I'm glad I'm not dead, _or _I love you, man, _which would be something even ear-popping Oasis wouldn't cover up.

But Sam just said, "So," again, and passed him a yellow bag of M&Ms from out of his jacket pocket. They tasted kind of like life, and when he swallowed the first chewed up mutated red one he smiled, and didn't stop until they were in Nebraska and Sam was asleep, blinking white sun making his eyelashes flutter while he drooled on the window.

----------------------

**Season 2 AU? Finale. Well, AU time when the Finale was set, like!! Maybe it was daytime instead of night!! YEAH! WOULDN'T THAT BE TOTALLY UN-HORROR-LIKE?! Dean pov. Missouri.**

Song Inspired By: _Acquiesce by Oasis._


	21. Manufacture The Situation

----------------------

_Manufacture The Situation_

----------------------

There is a hand between his legs, pumping, squeezing too hard, but that's alright. It's what he needs. What he wants. The fingers twist upwards at the head, long strokes, then short, but always fast, always too tight, constricting. His breath is rushing out quick and slanted, eyes shut, mouth clenched and teeth cutting into his tongue.

It's finished too soon, a rush, a dull roar of _out _and _over,_ his hips jerking automatically, his head falling back as he swallows a gasp. His Adam's apple bobs above the thunder of his pulse and he pushes the hand away, cleaning himself with spat-on toilet paper and an efficient hand. The owner of it smirks up at him from where it kneels, waxy red mouth in a too-knowing expression. She stands, black-ringed eyes sly, and pushes a kiss on him, harsh. Steps back with a breath of laughter, leaves with a slam of the toilet door, a smattering of outside's noise echoing.

He drops his head, breaths pulled in through his nose, knees unsteady. When he's ready he walks out of the stall, splashes water on his face and doesn't look in the mirror. He's living life like he's some kind of actor, and he doesn't need to see the falsehood playing his life to know it's true. He doesn't want to see what he's become – becoming. There's been too many nights like this, silent and swift, secret. There'll be too many more. The women always know, they can see him for those scarce minutes where he's up against a grimy wall, panting under their mouths or hands, and it's all the same. Nothing new. What he wants. What he needed.

He can't live like this forever, but for now it's what he has. He walks back into the bar and plops back into the seat next to his brother, watching the world in all its ordinary madness go by – the civilians' surety that everything is just as they perceive it, no more, no less.

"Aw, com' on!" a man shouts a couple of tables over, gesturing with his beer at the TV screen, where some faceless player has let him down. A chorus of groans travels around the bar in sympathy.

"You 'bout ready to go, Sam?"

He looks up from the trapped action of shredding his beer label; "Yeah, Dean. Let's go."

----------------------

**Season 2 Sometime... Sam pov. OFC. **

Song Inspired By: _Action by Powerman 5000._

_Uh… dark? And scary? And we hope Sam really doesn't do things like that? Chyeah._


	22. The World Was Too Wide

----------------------

_The World Was Too Wide_

----------------------

He chokes on the laugh, liquid bubbling up dark from his panting mouth, thick on the enamel of his teeth; he forgot to brush today. Doesn't matter now. Well, won't matter soon, anyway. "Sixteen," he says, to the arms that cradle him, the tense, unfamiliar face with its wide eyes and its tortured expression. Yeah, how does it think he feels? "I'm sixteen," he says again, and smiles, some of the liquid dripping down his chin.

Everything tastes like iron; _red blood cells contain iron and haemoglobin, they carry oxygen and energy around the body._ _Did you know that Adam? Did you? I learnt it today in class, isn't that cool? _

The pain is kind of a numb wave now, spreading to his arms and legs as the arms and the face say, "Kid, kid we're getting you an ambulance, alright? Just hang on a little more, you'll be okay."

He has to laugh again, but this time it's just more of a forced, drowning exhale. They both know the arms are lying. "M' name's Adam," he says, but it sounds more like a grunt, something without words, only sure, dull knowledge. He didn't think he'd go like this; he didn't think he'd go at all.

There's a pair of legs next to the arms and eyes, then, reaching up to the ceiling, words coming from where he can't see, saying, "Shit, Dean – shit – shit," and the endless litany goes on, the legs bending down to morph into another unfamiliar face, a bare chest revealed as a shirt presses in where the huge hole in his stomach is. He gasps then, pain ricocheting through him, strong and sharp. It sends waves all along his limbs to his head, and he thinks he might vomit.

"Adam? Adam, can you hear me? You're gonna be alright, just, just, Sam? What do we, what can we –?"

He tunes the arms and the eyes and the bare chest out – he'll never get that ripped now, never get that awesome tan that makes Trace weak in the knees. She told him, said it, _Adam you're too pasty. Get some sun, and then you might get some, eh son? _But Trace was crazy. That's what he loved about her, had always…

The edges of the church were receding, black like the shadow that'd punched that hole into his body. He tries to warn the chest and eyes and the arms, but they're yelling now, mouths moving soundless as they wave their hands and push and pull, slap his face and shout in it, the other set of eyes, the ones attached to the chest, are wet and dripping like his mouth, and he says, "Sixteen," again, just once more to try it out.

----------------------

**Anytime, S1 or S2. OMC pov. Dean, Sam. **

Song Inspired By: _Adam's Song by Blink 182._


	23. Quit You Over Time

----------------------

_Quit You Over Time_

----------------------

It feels like tasting shadows every time; swirls of darkness hinted at under the salty sweetness of his mouth, slow coil of his tongue against her own. Shades of grey, and black, and iridescent blues – everything she'd ever wanted, can't have, in the warm, wet slide of two misaligned mouths. He's as close as a pulse and remote as a dream; shining, glorified in her mind's eye. She's addicted, he the apathetic drug.

When he's inside her it's a consummation, a confirmation. Tart endings and beginnings, all twining into one tangled human mass. A web of thought, conglomeration of impulses and fired neurons, signals her brain sends along strings of nerves, and senseless notions pulled from cartoon images of hearts.

When it's over it's over; moment of connection shattered, the serene brutality of the sea kicked up into spray. He pants next to her on the sheets, breaths loud in the stillness that is her body. It's a little strange that she can't now; can't breathe, or feels like she can't because he's not in here, not inside her, not there anymore.

She turns on her side to suck in a breath and, "Cassie?" comes the voice over her shoulder, and she knows, knows what she has to do with the certainty of a junkie. Quit. Go cold turkey. Cut off the supply. It's pretty easy when it comes straight down to fact, theory; the practice is harder. She's been telling this to herself for weeks now.

She rolls back towards him, tucks herself into the sweaty heaving anvil that is his side. One more day, once more, a little bit longer, for old times' sake, just one more hit, one for the road. Whatever rationalisation works tonight; she'll do it tomorrow, she really will.

"I think I'm addicted to you," she drawls, and he laughs, even though it's not really a joke.

----------------------

**Preseries. Cassie pov. Dean. **

Song Inspired By: _Addicted by Kelly Clarkson._

_I quite despised Cassie, for a number of trivial reasons, not the least being her doughy eyes. In any case; I think she needed an excuse to get out of the relationship the first time, besides the 'you're crazy'. Unhealthy Dean addiction seemed likely enough for moi. _


	24. Cats, Couch, Crystal

----------------------

_Cats, Couch, Crystal_

----------------------

Bobby called us when we were halfway through Mississippi; gruff, familiar voice over the phone asking us for help. Dean protested at first, said we already had a hunt lined up, a good one too – hacked corpses left and right, his voice soaring sour over the radio, hands tapping with agitated rhythm on the wheel. And then I told him, I said, "It's Adele. She's gone missing," and he turned the car around right there in the middle of the freeway, mouth grim, horns beeping.

---

"No obvious signs of what did it," Bobby said, lips tight, hands stuffed into the pockets of his old fisherman's vest, cap pulled down low over his eyes. "If there were any clues they erased 'em from top to down. All of 'em. 'Cept for this. "

He passed me a slip of paper, creased and ripped, obviously torn out of an old exercise book Adele must've had lying around. It said in a rusty, flaking scrawl: _Don't hurl your diamonds unless you're sure they'll drown. _

"What the hell is that supposed to mean?" Dean said for both of us, pushing a hand through his hair, pacing back and forth in front of Adele's battered couch. The ancient thing was just as I remembered it: sagging in the middle, bottom all torn up where her cats got at it, sides with stuffing crawling out, the colour indistinguishable from green or brown. It was the ugliest thing I'd ever seen; within minutes of my butt's first meeting with it eight years ago, I'd fallen straight to sleep. She'd loved that thing.

It was then I realised I was already thinking of her as dead.

"Guys, I hate it as much as you do, but what are the chances she's still alive?" I asked, throat close, paper clenching under my fingers. I didn't look up from the words, writ in blood. Blood on blue-lined, _exercise book_ _paper._ Adele's blood. "How do we know there's even –" _a body _"– anything left to search for?"

"She's not dead," Dean said fiercely, hands clamped white-knuckled on a door frame. Down the sides it had markings in pencil; measurements of years and heights – two, until the fifteenth sketched line, then one. "She isn't. And even – we _owe_ her, Sam. We have to look."

Winchester loyalty. "I know we do."

---

"Samuel. _Saaamuel._"

"Gnnhh?"

"You always this much of a charmer?" When I pried my eyes open I met identical sets of mismatched blue and brown, and blinked hazily. Adele was tugging at my arm, faceless with the sun behind her. "Come on."

"Where are we going?" I groaned, shaking leaves out of my hair, standing. I'd fallen asleep under a tree, warmth and the first home-cooked food I'd had in years making me too comfortable to move. I wondered where Dean was; probably dead to the world on the fabled couch. "What'd you put in those brownies?" I accused as she towed me along the path, waves of red-brown hair catching the light as we stumbled along. Her fingers were hot on my forearm, then my hand, slipping between my own. My palms started to sweat.

"Trade secret," she grinned over her shoulder, and then we were at the river, white edged water rushing and tumbling over moss-eaten rocks. "Swim with us," she said, pulling her shirt over her head. She was only wearing a ragged sports bra underneath, nipples pebbling in the sudden cold. Jeans followed, until she was only in boxers and that bra, gooseflesh rippling all over her skin as wind brushed the trees. "Come on, Samuel. Swim with us."

She walked into the water, tossing me a wink over her shoulder, hips swaying.

---

I woke up with a snort, dream already disappearing, a cat springing off my chest as Dean shook my shoulder, changing the watch. It was still dark outside, a single candle burning on the table in the corner, Bobby asleep on a mattress in another room. None of us were ever going to be able to sleep in Adele's bed, or the other one.

The cushions of the couch had moulded themselves to my shape; the springs moaned in protest as I levered up – so did I. "Goddamn," Dean sighed out reverently, laying himself down onto it in my place, pulling the blankets over himself, still warm from my body heat. I knew how he felt; I'd just been there. Already his eyes were closing, which was a miracle in itself. Usually Dean wouldn't sleep when a normal case was bothering him; ones like this he threw himself into suicidally, wouldn't look after himself at all. I fell in love with the thing all over again.

I moved to the table, rubbing sleep out of my eyes, yawning. More reading. We were looking for a clue – anything to tell us what that note might have meant. There were plenty of books to choose from; Adele had always been a packrat. She had tomes on every supernatural thing under the sun, and then some. Ritualistic information on possession, demons, spirits, voodoo. Recipe books for spell craft, wizardry, vegetarian dishes. Religious symbols, arcane symbols, satanic symbols. Knowledge on psychics, telepathy, telekinesis, prophetic visions. I'd have to ask her if I could borrow that last one if –

We were hoping she'd written a note in one of them, somewhere. Something to go on. We hadn't found her personal journal yet, if she had one.

I sat down in one of the two chairs, massaging my forehead where a headache was already starting to grow. Within minutes of my picking up a book one of her six cats jumped into my lap, purring, and curling itself down to sleep. I left it there, scratching idly at its ears, immersing myself in exorcisms and ceremonies.

---

The water was colder than I expected, and higher too, coming up to my neck before I stopped, not even near the middle yet. Adele was further out, floating, arms spread wide as though to embrace the blue sky, its branch-framed length studded with fat white clouds.

"Hey," I called, teeth chattering. "It's _cold."_

She laughed, the sound flowing into the roar of water further up the way, and said, "What'd you expect Samuel? It's only just spring, isn't it?"

---

"Sammy – hey, Sam, wake up." I'd fallen asleep on top of a book, one on cleansing a house free of spirits, the pages dog-eared. Cats were piled up around me like a vibrating blanket, their collective purr a dull, thin rumble throughout the room. "Hey," Dean said again, when I blinked up at him. "You find anything?"

"No," I grunted, and shut the book I'd been using as a pillow. As one the cats all hissed at me, backs arching, hair standing up straight all along their spines. They raced each other out of the open window above the couch.

Dean and I looked at each other.

"That was weird," he said, eyes narrowing, and picked up the book I'd just closed, mouth pursing as he studied it. "You don't think…?"

"They _are_ Adele's cats," I said, staring, considering. "Maybe…?"

---

"Maybe not," Dean said, pushing it away from him a couple of hours later, rubbing a hand over his jaw, stubble rasping. He looked up at me from bloodshot eyes, the lines around his mouth more pronounced with his fatigue. I wondered if it was possible for him to have developed a couple more in the last week.

"Maybe…" I said slowly, biting the inside of my lip as I ran my eyes and fingertips over the thick, leather cover. "Maybe it's not _in_ the book. You think?"

"It can't be that easy," he said, but he passed me the knife out of his boot anyway, trying not to look hopeful. I slit along the seam, and there it was: a key, small and cold and with a curled pattern at the end, falling into my palm. "Tomb Raider she is not," Dean said while I stared at the little bronze key in my hand, pulling the book out of my other and cutting it all the way open. There was a letter there, too.

A simple note that said: _'If you guys are reading this, you finally wised up and grew __some__ brains – well, I can hope can't I? You found __this__ instead of the real thing. Hurry up and look in the left arm of the couch; my diary's in there, jerk wads.' _It had Adele in every loopy a, every plump e and backwards slanted l and f. I felt salt in my eyes and smiled to cover it.

We cut the couch open too, pulling stuffing out while I apologised mentally, knowing Adele'd probably make one of us sew it up if she was in a mood. And there it was, her diary, key sliding in easy, falling open immediately to a well worn page, the writing messy and tear blotched; the start of this hunt, I thought, eyes closing.

---

We found the body one and a half miles up the river from where we'd crawled out, three hours later. Congealed blood pooled around the head like a halo, limbs snapped at insane angles from the force of the water, skin pale as fresh linen sheets, the lips blue. Freckles across the bridge of the nose standing out as obvious as the clouds in the clear sky, lit by the fading sun. The red-brown hair is spread out in a bedraggled, tangled mass, twigs and leaves and mud and half-melted snow stringing locks together in a mass of Medusa coils to outline the face.

Adele's face.

Next to me Adele screams, a wordless sound full of agony beyond my comprehension; Dean tries to hold her back, sobs caught in his throat, but Dad just tells him to let her thrashing body go, and she falls next to Crys, shuddering with the force of her pain.

"No," she moans, gathering the body into her arms, rocking back and forth, pulling her twin's face to her own. "No, please, oh god, please, no, I'll do anything…"

The scratches on my arms where she pulled me out instead catch on Dean's jacket when he puts it around my shoulders with shaking hands. He grips my bicep for a minute, four heartbeats, then shivers out a choked sigh and steps back again. I'm still here. Dad's doing the same for Adele, who doesn't even seem to notice, doesn't stop rocking slowly, tears falling to melt some of the ice on Crystal's eyelashes.

"Adele," Dad says softly, his voice firm. "Let go."

---

We went through every page; she'd stuck in some of the rituals from her book, had made little notes in the margins next to certain ones, things like: _'made the last room catch on fire', 'no noticeable change?' _and _'load of shit – everyone knows marjoram is for cleaning out memories, not spirits. Won't use it.'_

"The house haunted?" Dean asked; covering the bases.

"Can't be," I replied, auto-answer, practical. Stretching, my back creaking out of its slump. I rolled my shoulders and neck; my headache was getting worse. My chest felt tight too, now, remembering. Ice thinning blood like turpentine around that too familiar face. "Bobby checked soon as he got here; no EMF, no cold spots, nothing. He thought it might be that, but he didn't find any signs, and he looked for three days before we arrived."

"You and I both know that doesn't mean anything, Sam. If it is – you know – the normal rules don't apply here, you get that?"

"Yeah," I said, and flipped to the last page again.

_I know she's here,_ it said, _I can feel her. Whacked up twin-connection or just the normal whack? Never could tell the difference when it came to Crystal. She's leaving notes over the house now, little things we used to say to each other, written in blood. 'Mistook the heat for fire', she left me after I tried the first cleansing ritual. She'd used the power beyond the grave – always was stronger than me; set Dad's old uniform on fire. I couldn't put it out in time to save it; it crumbled to ash in my hands. 'Stop turning your tricks', she put on my pillow when I'd tried three more, and I haven't tried another since. 'Don't hurl your diamonds unless you're sure they'll drown,' appeared this morning. Dad called us his diamonds before, so I think that's it. Well, I'm gone. Thought about moving to Chicago, but the city never thrilled me much anyway; know Dad'd give me a look like I just peed on a kitten if I even suggested it – you know, if he was still around. Wouldn't want the old place gone all to ruin, not that I think there's much of a choice now. Bobby – boys, if you're there; if I'm not dead she'll have me out by the river – there's an old cave by the sandbank where we found her. Bring me food. _

_If I'm not alive make sure you look after the cats? And the couch, too. _

'_Del._

---

She was alive; exhausted and almost fainting from hunger, but she was _alive._ "Torch her corpse yet?" she asked, wolfing down the pack of oatmeal cookies and the carton of milk Dean had brought for her. Bobby slung a blanket around her shoulders, and she just smiled at me, bit savagely into the cookie and faked an apathy I hadn't been around to see grow.

"Why didn't you?" Bobby said, for all of us, and she shrugged.

"I never could bring myself to do it; sentimental old bitch that I am, and besides – I don't really want to have the sure knowledge of what I'd look like as a dried up husk, know what I'm saying?" She swallowed more milk, and wiped her eyes on the blanket covertly; we all pretended not to notice. "She's not evil, just lonely. I know how she feels. But she is a danger. Her thoughts when I got them are all mixed up, crazy confused. She needs to move on." It was said matter-of-fact, like it was any case, any spirit – we all took our cues from her.

"Yeah," Dean said, "We'll go do that now. Get her back to the house safe, Sam, alright?" He and Bobby took up the backpacks and disappeared.

I helped her up and we started walking, slow down the path to her house, her body cold where it leaned against mine. "Thought I was gonna die, Sam," she said finally.

"Yeah." I didn't know how to respond. _Glad you aren't? Sorry we're late? _

"Thought you were gonna die – you remember the sound? I'll never forget it. Roar like a thousand lions in a waterfall, and I knew what was happening, so did she. You didn't. She said to me – 'Sam! Get Sam!', so I did." I didn't know what to say to that, either, my heart freezing up somewhere to lodge in my mouth. I remembered the sound; wouldn't ever forget it either. "Haven't ever regretted it, Samuel. If I didn't it would've been all three of us. I know that, so should you." I nodded, unable to say a word. Her fingers were as hot as they'd been all those years ago, slipping in to twine with my own. "She's forgiven me, and you – I think it's time we did the same, huh?"

---

All six cats flopped on top of her when she sat on the couch, scrambling to climb onto her lap; a tabby with orange ears got there first, purring loud enough to rival the Impala. She buried her face in its coat and just sat there for the longest time, unmoving, for all the world looking as though she was communicating with it.

It was Adele, after all.

"Take the book, Samuel," she said when we were leaving, book on prophetic dreams shoved into my hands, a white fur ball draped around her neck. "You need it more than me. By the way? She always wanted you to have this." Then she kissed me, one sweet kiss that tasted like differences present and past, cold lips and hot hands on my face. When she stepped back I opened my eyes, one blue and one brown one staring into mine. "Goodbye, Samuel."

I opened it on the highway, Dean silent next to me, Metallica loud between us. In the middle there was a note: _hey Adele, she's got a show for you. _There was a tiny _C _at the bottom.

---

----------------------

**Season 2? Sam pov. OFCs. Bobby. Dean. **

Song Inspired By: _Adele by White Mud Freeway. _

_Dedicated to __**Delsunshine**__, for just generally being wonderful (totally stole your nickname right there), and __**The Goddess Aurora**__ for being my test-monkey and __**ArtemiScribbles**__ for being all sorts of fabulous. I'm not sure if I like this one or not. Anti-climax, anyone?_


	25. To Buy Your Innocence

----------------------

_To Buy Your Innocence_

----------------------

He stands there in the doorway, just outside the living room, and you can feel him. He is the hurricane's eye, but you _don't look._ You stay where you are on the couch, hands palm up and empty in your lap, and stare at the flickering face of the TV screen. _Don't move. _

"Dean," he says, quiet and firm. When had he grown an adult voice? An objective one. Maybe the same time he made all these decisions. Maybe that's what he needed it for; sell some innocence to buy another type. "I need a ride."

You _don't say anything._ Not _what about what I need Sam, huh? _Not _what about what Dad needs? _You just sit there, on the middle cushion of the couch, unseeing eyes glued to the jeering square of light in front of you, sensations buried somewhere you cannot reach them.

---

"You can't change the way I feel," he said, _that voice,_ hands white knuckled on the strap of his duffel, jaw clenched tight. You see it from the corner of your eye, in the flash of a passing car, his eyes gleaming in the night, pointed straight ahead.

You don't _say anything. _Your levels of failure crash down around your ears, and the weight of it pushes your foot to the floor.

For him.

---

There's a note when you get back.

_Took the harpies in Maine. _

_You look up the restless spirit in Wisconsin – case notes are in the car. _

_Check in every three days. _

He took the one as far away from Palo Alto as he could get; you've got the one in the middle. He's living life as he hunts, getting out of the area after the climax so there's no one left to finger. So there's no one left to blame but those left behind.

The note is white against your skin, the black slashes of his writing cutting the page in three separate lines. You stare at it for a minute, shrug and grab your jacket back off the chair.

There's nothing left here anymore.

---

There are girls, countless. There are hunts and victims and monsters; bodies to burn and salt to fling, music to listen to. There's a car to drive and knives to sharpen. There's a voice on the end of a phone line that grunts coordinates and clicks out. There are bullets to buy and witnesses to charm. There are motels to sleep in.

The girls are faceless. The hunts are harder, victims die, the monsters seem faster, bigger; the bodies make you ill and the salt container is empty because that was his job, the music has stupid lyrics that segue into your thoughts. The car is too quiet and the knives were never really your thing. The voice is too sharp, too short, almost unfamiliar. You buy too many bullets for one person, and the witnesses clam up with out a puppy dog smile. There's always an empty bed next to yours.

---

Two months later whiskey's still a heated burn that fills the space of your stomach, wood is still splintered beneath your empty palms, and bartenders still smile at you sweet and warm and obvious, no secrets. Nothing's changed. You're carrying on.

There are two guys a little further down the bar, just inside each other's space and easy with it, laughing, faces lit up. _Brothers, _you think, studying them, eyes searching as the taller one ruffles the other's hair, and the shorter punches him in the shoulder in reply, grinning. _Brothers,_ you think, and toss back the sour taste in your mouth, alcohol twining your brain into knots of half deadened consciousness. You slam the shot glass back down on the bar, throw down a couple of bills and leave.

The air outside isn't cold enough to clear your head.

---

Things crop up in papers that make you laugh – a water skiing budgerigar in Britain, a comic strip, dumb police conclusions on a case; you turn to the spot next to you to share, but it's unfilled, and you turn back again, numb.

It catches you in these moments, before you manage to beat it back – it gets easier every time to amputate yourself. But when you look for back up there's no bird's nest of brown, when you get injured there's no reassuring white smile, when you get frustrated there's no stick thin body that stretches over your head to bring back down to the ground. When you're cleaning your tools there's no rough voice to ask if you're doing it right, when you stumble there's no wide hand on your arm to pull you up, when you buy food your don't have to remember three separate orders. It makes you falter, makes you stutter for a second.

You lost two people when one left.

----------------------

**Preseries. Dean pov. Sam. John.**

Song Inspired By: _Adia by Sarah McLachlan. _


End file.
